The present invention is related generally to the field of microscopic examination of objects including slides containing biological specimens. One important example of this is the identifying and counting of the different types of white blood cells found in a smear of whole blood as well as other evaluations which require microscopic optical analysis of the blood. Generally, in the past the task of finding, identifying and counting white blood cells along with the performance tests such as evaluating red blood cell morphology, platelet sufficiency, and other commonly utilized studies has been a tedious and time consuming manual task. Recently, much effort has been expended in an effort to automate the examination of blood smears. An automated, computerized scanning system that enables an operator to perform leukocyte differential counts, red blood cell morphology studies, platelet sufficiency estimates and other required evaluations is illustrated and described in the co-pending application of Adkisson, et al., Ser. No. 607,741 filed of even date and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention.
The present invention, in particular, involves an automatically controlled, precision microscope stage positioning system for use with an automated scanning microscope system.